Posts tagged ‘software’

The latest Universal Media Server has never worked for me. Many years ago, I downloaded what must have been v. 6, and it went well. Upon receiving notification I should upgrade, I didâonly to have no videos play any more. Only thumbnails appeared and that was the best UMS could do.
Fast forward to 2019, when I buy a new computer, expecting that, with a clean installation of Windows 10, any prior issue would be history. Not so: UMS still behaved the same, so I ran v. 6.3.2, which works about 85 per cent of the time. This is, of course, better than 0 per cent for more recent versions.
Iâm at a loss on why newer versions donât work, considering this computer shares little with its predecessor other than licences for programs that have no relation to media streaming. Yet I must be in a minority (again) since there are few entries of this in UMS forums.
Todayâs error was interesting, and this is a note to myself and anyone else who comes across it. Those who believe software runs the same every time are either unobservant or kidding themselves: while on a Mac this usually holds true, on Windows it is sheer fantasy. UMS refused to recognize my TV as a TV, loading the configuration for Microsoft Windows Media Player (WMP) instead. Naturally, nothing playedâin fact, nothing was found in any of the directories.
Fix: I edited the UMS configuration file manually, searched for selected_renderers =, and added what the program usually found: Vizio Smart TV. Quit and restart (the executable from the programâs directory).
It does mean the other configurations might not load, but since most of the time Iâm watching UMS-streamed content on my TV, then Iâm sorted. If I have other devices to load, Iâll cross that bridge when I come to it.

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I see Googleâs going to stop supporting Huawei as a developer. How is this a bad thing?
First, Huawei can still get the public parts of Android, since theyâre open-source. Secondly, if they donât get updates ahead of time, so what? When have western software companies rolled out bug-free updates? Based on my own experience, Chinese cellphone developers make stuff that just works, and Iâm inclined to trust them more these days.
Thirdly, no one needs all that Google crap anyway: I always said that if it disappeared overnight, weâd all find replacements within a week. Now Huawei has toâin fact, it already has them.
Anyone who owns a Chinese phone made for the Chinese market already knows that they have their own app stores. Why do you actually need YouTube through an app when you can browse to the website? Maybe Huawei will do a tiny YouTube app that only surfs to their site for those keen on getting into the Google snooping network. Is a Gmail app really a must if you can set up your phone really easily as an email client to pull from Gmail? As to maps, Iâve been using Here Maps since Iâve had my Meizu M2 Note in 2016, and while it isnât perfect, itâs more than adequate. Recently I found they had maps of the Chatham Islands when the carsâ sat-nav didnât.
All Huawei really needs to do is roll out its own app store to its western phones with decent enough translations, and make sure itâs updated with the APKs.
I have a better Meizu weather app on my phone than anything Iâve ever found on Google, and Iâm sure Huawei has its version.I owned a Huawei phone many years ago, although it was from my telco and I never had it rooted. It came with a suite of battery-draining Google junk, including services that you could switch off only to have them restart; but when I was able to get a Google-free phone, Iâve never looked back. When that phone was replaced, I made sure the next one was Google-free as well.
Whatâs going to happen is that Google and the US will lose out as Huawei might find itself zooming ahead with a superior app store, and its own developments may outpace the Americansâ.
Corporate America may be patting itself on the back, and their president may think he was doing their bidding, but I think theyâll find themselves weakened.

Iâve written to Old Mout Cider, which I was surprised to find is part of the Dutch conglomerate Heineken NV, and await an answer, but the biggie here has to be Ăber.
Many years ago, I tried the app but could never get it to work. Neither could my partner. Then we started hearing from Susan Fowler and Pando Daily, and that helped confirm that we would never support the company.
Basically, Ăber would never let me log in, saying I had exhausted my password attempts after the grand total of one, despite sending a password reset link. My partner could log in but we could never figure anything out beyond that (it had credit card details she had never entered and said we lived next door).
Concerned about this, I went to Ăberâs website to request deletion of my personal details, but this was the screen I got.

Now, either Big Tech One is lying or Big Tech Two is lying.
To its credit, Ăber New Zealand responded very quickly on Twitter (on Good Friday, no less) and said it would look into it. Within minutes it was able to confirm that I do not have an account there (presumably it was deleted with a lack of use, or maybe I went and did it back when they wouldnât let me log in?) and my email address doesnât appear anywhere.
Therefore, we can likely again conclude that Facebook lies and we have to bring into question its advertising preferencesâ management page.
We already know Facebook has lied to advertisers about the number of people it can reach (namely that it exceeds the number of people alive in certain demographics), that there is a discrepancy between what it reports in the preferences and what a full download of personal data reveals, so I have to wonder what the deception is here.
Is it allowing these advertisers to reach us even when (as Ăber claims) they have no information on us? (Heinekenâs response will seal the deal when they get back to me after Easter.) In that case, it will be very hard for Facebook to argue that we have given them consent to do this.
Heineken, incidentally, is a major advertiser on Instagram, as I see their advertisements even after opting out of all alcohol advertising on the Facebook ad preferencesâ page (as instructed by Instagram). When we establish contact next week, I will be more than happy to tell them this. Who knows? While I doubt they will cease advertising on the platforms on my say-so, sometimes you have to plant the seed so that they are aware their ads are not being filtered out from those people who do not want to see booze promoted in their feeds.

I’ve had a great week with my new laptop, though it exhibits some of the same traits I’ve frequently seen with Windows 10: settings’ windows vanishing when attempting to load. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, demo PCs I’ve seen at the store have terrible reliability history scores, and mine is no exception. It ranked a 10 when it left Just Laptops in Auckland, but dropped to 1 when I began installing software on it. The lesson here is this: Windows 10 is allergic to software and usage. Never install a thing on it, and never touch it, and it might continue being a 10. It’s that simple.
Of course, there is the issue of updating it, and even a PC on absolutely stock settings has trouble with that âŠ

Avira informs me that Ccleaner 5.51 is infected with a virus, called TR/Swrort.ofrgv.
I havenât come across anything online about this threat, except for reports in 2017 when Ccleaner was distributed with malware, eventually found to be the work of hackers who compromised the servers of the company behind Ccleaner.The Hacker News said that hackers got in there five months before replacing the legitimate Ccleaner with their own.
Iâve no idea where the blame should go this time, or even if my own computer has been compromised somewhere, but I’ve now downgraded to v. 5.50 and there have been no further alerts.
Anyone else had trouble with their Ccleaners?

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Since (mostly) leaving Facebook, and cutting down on Twitter, Iâve come to realize the extent of how outdated traditional computing definitions have become. To help those who need to get up to speed, Iâve compiled a few technobabble words and translated them into normal English.

app: in many cases, an extremely limited web browser for your cellphone that only works with one site, as opposed to a proper web browser that works with many sites.

clean install: something entirely unnecessary, but suggested by tech support people who want to cover up buggy operating systems (q.v. Windows 10).

cloud: hackable online repository of naughty photos of celebrities.

comments’ section: when you see this while surfing, it’s a reminder to leave the web page you are on and make up your own mind.

Facebook: a website where bots live, where post-sharing is intentionally broken to ensure you need to pay for attention. Once paid, your posts are shared with bots, so even fewer humans actually see them.

Facebook friend: (a) a friend; (b) a total stranger; (c) a bot.

Google: (a) a virtual hole into which you dump all your private information, to be sold on to corporations, but feel good doing it because you gave it up to a private company to use against you rather than have the state take it to use against you; (b) a cult that supports (a), whose members will think you have a degenerative brain disease if you dare question the perfection of their god.

malware scanner: malware (especially when offered by Facebook, q.v.).

messenger app: an inefficient messaging program where typing takes 10 times as long as on a desktop or laptop computer. Designed to dissuade you from actually calling the person.

phone: portable computing device, not used to make calls.

remote desktop: when your operating system fails, and the odds of you seeing your familiar screen are remote.

social media: media where people are antisocial.

Twitter: (a) social media with no discernible rules on who gets kicked off and why; (b) where the US president gets angry.

white balance: when racists attack people of colour but pretend they are noble and against racism.

Weibo: a website monitored by the Chinese Communist Party, where users have more freedom than on Facebook and Twitter.

Windows 10: a buggy operating system that requires 10 goes at any updates or patches, hence the name.

In amongst all the political fallout of the National Party this weekâwhat Iâm dubbing (and hashtagging) âcaught in the Rossfireââwas a series (well, over 100) Tweets from Morgan Knutson, a designer who once worked for Google. Unlike most Googlers, especially the cult-like ones who refuse to help when you point out a fault with Google, Knutson decided he would be candid and talk about his experience. And it isnât pretty. Start here:

Now that Google+ has been shuttered, I should air my dirty laundry on how awful the project and exec team was.

I'm still pissed about the bait and switch they pulled by telling me I'd be working on Chrome, then putting me on this god forsaken piece of shit on day one.

Or, if you prefer, head to the Twitter page itself, or this Threader thread.
As anyone who follows this blog knows, Iâve long suspected things to be pretty unhealthy within Google, and it turns out that itâs even worse than I expected.
A few take-outs: (a) some of the people who work there have no technical or design experience (explains a lot); (b) there’s a load of internal politics; (c) the culture is horrible but money buys a lot of silence.
Knutson claims to have received a lot of positive feedback, some in private messaging. His Tweets on the aftermath:

Iâve received a number of DMs from former and current google employees that say theyâve experienced similar things.

This, I thought, summed it up better than I could, even though I’ve had a lot more space to do it:

This reads like a Google version of 'Chaos Monkeys': unvarnished, unblinking, just the right amount of sneering, and merciless when it comes to arrogant mediocrity and the machinery of cushy ass-kissing mixed with an un-fuck-up-able monopoly that underwrites the outlandish pay. https://t.co/PmB6zYwgZT

Since Flyme 6.2 for the Meizu M2 Note, Meizu has ceased providing automatic updates of its OS to rooted phones. There are a lot of pages and YouTube videos about unrooting, and after finding that none were relevant, Iâd like to add to the din with what worked for me.
Meizuâs own instruction to go to the Flyme website is right. Head there, grab the relevant update.zip from their downloads (in my case, it was the simplified Chinese one), and put it into the root directory of your internal storage.
However, clicking on the update file from the default file manager brings up a dialogue, saying you can only update if you tick the box permitting the process to delete all your data. Don’t do it.
Even though Meizu has a section in the security settings to let you root the phone, thereâs no equivalent page to unroot it. Once rooted, the original page giving you the warning about warranties, etc. doesnât show up again. All you see is a page telling you what programs have root access. And thereâs really no point getting SudoSU or other packages if youâre unsure of what to do.
The solution is so deceptively simple that Iâm surprised it canât be easily found online. I can’t even see it on the Meizu forums. Hereâs the low-down so you donât have to spend hours trying to locate it.
1. Switch off your phone.
2. Switch it back on pressing both the power and volume buttons, then let go when the Meizu logotype appears. (I had to do this twice but I got there.) This puts the phone into recovery mode.
3. Youâre then given two options: one to clear your data and the other to upgrade. Since youâve already got update.zip in the root directory, select the upgrade option. Don’t wipe your data.
Thatâs it. No unrooting, no extra downloads.
Iâm now running Flyme 6.3 for the Chinese edition of my phone.
I have to hand it to Meizu for making the process work pretty well. Unlike some other companies, these OS updates actually work out of the box. Itâs just a shame there are more hoops to jump compared with Flyme 5 or even 6.1.

As many of you know, between around December 8 and February 2âdates during which I had Microsoft Windows 10âs fall Creators update without the January 31 cumulative patchâmy computer suffered roughly three to six BSODs per day. Going on to Bleeping Computer was helpful, but Microsoftâs wisdom tended to be hackneyed and predictable.
While I was lucky at Microsoft Answers and got a tech who wasnât rehashing remarks from other threads, eventually he gave up and suggested I download the old spring Creators update, if that was the last version that was OK.
I never had the time, and on February 2, I got the cumulative patch and everything has been fine since.
It means, of course, that Microsoft had released a lemon at the end of 2017 and needed a big patch to deal with the problems it had caused. No word to their people on the forum though, who were usually left scratching their heads and concluding that the only option was a clean installation.
I had bet one of the techs, however, that there was nothing wrong with my set-up, and everything to do with the OS. We know Windows is no longer robust because of the QC processes Microsoft uses, with each team checking its own code. Thatâs like proofreading your own work. You donât always spot the errors.
I said I could walk into any computer store and find that the display models were crashing as well.
Last weekend, I did just that.
Here are the Reliability Monitors of two Dell laptops running factory settings picked at random at JB Hi-fi in Lower Hutt.

Above: The Reliability Monitors of two display Dell laptops at JB Hi-fi in Lower Hutt, picked at random.

The Monitors look rather like my own, not scoring above 2 out of 10.
They are crashing on combase.dll for the most part, whereas mineâs crashing on ntdll.dll. Nevertheless, these are crashes that shouldnât be happening, and a new machine shouldnât have a reliability score that low.
For those of you who suspect you have done nothing wrong, that your computer has always worked till recently, and you practise pretty good computer maintenance, your gutâs probably right. The bugs arenât your fault, but that of slapdash, unchecked programming. I doubt you need full reinstallations. You may, however, have to put up with the bugs till a patch is released. It is the folly of getting an update too earlyâa lesson that was very tough to relearn this summer.

Now that I’ve gone four days without a BSOD, it does appear Microsoft realized it had rolled out another lemon, and, nearly two months later, patched things. Goodness knows how many hours it has cost people worldwideâthe forums have a lot of people reporting BSODs (maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I really don’t remember this many, ever). I posted this in a discussion entitled âWindows 10 is a nightmare!’, and the comments there make for sobering reading. A small number have had to purchase new computers; others report that the OS has made their computers unusable or that countless hours were spent trying to fix things. I can believe it. My addition:

I have to concur with the original poster: Windows 10 has been, hands-down, the most shockingly unreliable OS ever made, by anyone, anywhere.
I have spent more time here for this OS than at any other time with Microsoft productsâand Windows 10 has been terrible from day one.
Most recently, I have had multiple BSODs per day since the fall Creators update was installed, and until Microsoft rolled out a patch at the end of January that finally fixed problems of its own making. If your computer is BSODing multiple times a day, with 800-plus events in the reliability monitor per week, then you can imagine how little work gets done. Things finally calmed down on February 2, when I received the cumulative update. You can see the thread for yourselfÂ here: I actually feel sorry for the MS tech who stepped in, because heâs solving problems a crap product with faults not of his own making. They wonât be bugs that are in his handbook. Looking at this part of the forum alone, BSOD comes up a lot in the subject lines, more than I ever remember. So it isnât us, Microsoft, itâs you.
Going right back to day one, I canât believe how many threads Iâm involved in. Windows 10 started up differently each day, as it would forget its own settings each day. Some days Cortana worked, other days it didnât. Sometimes I had the UK keyboard (which I had never once installed), other days the US. In November 2015 I had to post aÂ queryto ask how manyÂ hoursÂ it would take for a Windows 10 machine to shut down. Thatâs right, hours. At least thatâs better than some of you who commented earlier who canât get yours to start up.
Initially,Â Cortana required fiddling with each day to get it to work. Notifications onceÂ went back in timeâon a Saturday I began getting notifications from the previous Thursday. None from Friday though, they all vanished. Windows began forgetting myÂ default browserÂ andÂ default PDF application, and no, you couldnât fix either from the standard settings. The Anniversary update took 11 attempts to install on this PCâand one of them screwed things up so badly my PC was bricked and wound up at the shop, where I had to spend money to get it fixed urgently. (I joked at the time it was called Windows 10 because you needed more than 10 attempts to do anything.) It never installed on my laptop at all: by the time Creators spring came round, the one update that was compatible with my laptop, it had been throughÂ 40Â unsuccessful update cycles.
Thereâs still more that I can share, and you can probably find it via my profile. I would add more but on the original reply I actually hit a limit on these boxes. I guess Microsoft has a limit to how much bad news it can take from one user.
Microsoft has actually changed its QC procedures for the worseâthat is a matter of recordâand youâd think after three years of abject failure they would switch back. We see the same hackneyed official responses here day in, day out. They need to spend more time getting things right before they ship their OSs, and spare their community people a lot of wasted hours with solutions that generally do not work. In my latest thread,Â IÂ fixed itâyes, the tech helped a bit, but ultimately I had to listen to my gut and believe that MS had messed up. I was right, but wow, at a massive cost to my real job with days lost to being Microsoftâs unpaid technician.

It is good, however, to come out the other side (knock on wood)âand despite the countless hours spent, I was once again right, and conventional wisdom was wrong. I’m not sure if that’s something to be that proud of. A healthy mistrust of big firms stands one in good stead nevertheless, and remember, every industry has thick people making stuff.